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I'd really advice the gettext extension, especially when you are not going to do the translations yourself. Many applications exist to help translating gettext type internationalisation. Also, it allows you to have incomplete translations, which might be nice in some cases.

If you can not (for some reason) install the extension, there is also a PEAR module available called PEAR::File_Gettext and the Zend framework also supports the file format.

Edit:
Also not that you'll have to deal with other cultural differences like jokes, currency, text alignment, the formatting of dates and money et cetera.